Chapter 26: Chapter 26 - Record
A dull vibration rolled across the chamber, stone grinding against stone, and just like every time before this, the tiles split open to form two hatches.
From the left, slithered the same Frost-Rot centipede I’d killed just minutes before. A crystalline pale blue veined with black, and leaking out through every seam of its plated exterior, was that same white vapor tinged with purple. The smell was already stifling, but in the next moments, it doubled in intensity.
I saw the creature long before it ever walked out of the shadows. The scene reminded me of how I’d first spotted that flame toad from amongst the trees.
It burned.
Wreathed in fire the whole way through, the armored plates of its carapace were a molten orange, flames coiling and dancing with its every movement. And from the seams, just like its counterpart, poured decay. Where its frost-born twin brought cold, this one breathed heat.
They were a sight to see if I was being honest with myself. Truly grand creatures, massive in size, coiled with strength, armored to the teeth, and wreathed by the elements.
Anyone else might have called them nightmarish, but I saw them for what they were.
My Test Subjects.
[The Fifth Wave has begun.]
They charged side by side, like a their armored bodies sweeping across the chamber like a living wall of Ice, Fire and Decay.
I didn’t wait for them to reach me.
Timing mattered. Distance mattered. I had learnt that many times over now.
When they were close enough, both centipedes reared their heads in unison, mandibles sparking as their maws opened to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth.
Frost crackled. Flame sputtered.
That was my moment. Mana surged through me as I dropped low and rushed forward, my legs pumping, weight continuously shifting as my axe came around to my side.
Red light flared along my veins, and then, it overflowed---spilled into the weapon itself.
My Mana, my blood, and my axe...in that one moment, they all felt synonymous.
I slipped into the opening with ease, passing beneath their arching heads and arriving right beside them. Heat and frost hissed over me as their segmented bodies coiled in panic.
But it was too late.
I swung, and the red energy surged, leaving a crimson arc as the axe cleaved carapace and everything in between.
A perfect horizontal slash. A bisection.
And then, like the wave of a tsunami that had been split horizontally, the halves toppled, their heads carrying behind me, and the stumps of their bodies falling at my feet with sprays of rotting blood.
[You have killed a Lv.3 Tremor-Class Frost-Rot Centipede]
[You have killed a Lv.7 Tremor-Class Flame-Rot Centipede]
It was my quickest fight yet, and evidently, it was the quickest fight this Wave had ever seen.
[The Fifth Wave has been cleared successfully.]
[Congratulations! You have cleared the Fifth Wave in record time!]
[Time Elapsed: 4.87 seconds]
[Rewards will be distributed once you have exited the Challenge.]
I breathed, observing the red energy that lingered upon the black-metal blade, and when it dissipated a moment later, my body toppled, unconscious.
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~ Elsewhere ~
The anvil rang steady in the endless forge, sparks leaping like fleeting stars. For centuries, his rhythm had not faltered: melt, shape, refine, break, repeat. The same ingot of Orokan...reborn a thousand times, hammered toward a perfection he knew would never come.
And, yet, in that moment, his hammer had halted mid-fall, his interest piqued by something other than his craft---one of his own creations, speaking to him from another realm entirely.
[A Clearance Record in the Matrix has been broken.]
The molten mound of Orokan lost its form, forgotten.
"Which world?"
[Telaria.]
For the first time in an age, his pulse quickened. Telaria. Not his domain, nor his right. Even attempting to look at the happenings of that world was dangerous.
"Why?" His voice was low, serious, "Why do you trespass in her Realm?"
[I was tracing a signal, Master. It resembled my own in every way. Yet I found no information in the Grand Records regarding the existence of any such creation aside from myself.]
[My programming compelled me to investigate. So I followed, and drew the signal-bearer within.]
For a long moment, he did not move. Then, slowly, the grip on his hammer loosened, and it fell to the ground, the sound echoing like thunder.
He remembered words spoken not too long ago. A favor, and a promise of return.
But the scale of gods was not the scale of men. He had expected millennia yet. Perhaps longer.
And now---already---this.
"Show me."
His sight was guided, pierced through reality, through time, and into the dungeon’s halls. Yet what he found there and then was not what memory had promised. A boy. A mortal. Awkward in motion, raw in spirit, struggling even at the lowest rung of trial.
He began to doubt. Why did a child such as this hold one of his greatest creations?
But then, as the boy fell, struck, broken, ripped apart—he rose again. Always rising. Always remaking.
His eyes widened just slightly. This gift...
The flesh mended, the weakness hardened, improved with every injury he endured.
Eidolon allowed himself the faintest of smiles, So this is what you used it for, All-Father.
The shape was different, the vessel crude, but the spark---yes. The spark was the same.
His gaze removed from the dungeon, letting it sweep over the world instead. He spoke aloud, deliberate but respectful.
"I take it he is yours now, Great Mother?"
A gentle voice echoed within his mind, He is.
His hands rested on the anvil, steady now.
"I see," he whispered back. "You planned for me to find him. To test him. Strengthen him."
Indeed.
A small, amused nod brushed across his features, "A game well-played. He shall have my blessing."
You know me well, child.
"We shall speak soon, Great Mother."
Eidolon severed their connection with that, and his focus returned to his forges.
He eyed the deformed mound of metal, stubborn despite heat enough to power a Sun. It was his first failed creation in hundreds of years...but for good reason. He picked it up with a grunt, and threw it back in his furnace, watching as the flames consumed it whole.
You were right, Old Friend, he thought, resuming the work, The wheel still turns...and the ember...still burns.